Dentsu Aegis Network acquires majority share in Milestone Brandcom

Nabendu Bhattacharyya, who established Milestone Brandcom in October 2009, will continue as CEO and managing director.

The Dentsu Aegis Network has announced the acquisition of Milestone Brandcom, an out-of-home (OOH) specialist agency in India. Nabendu Bhattacharyya, who established Milestone Brandcom in October 2009, will continue as CEO and managing director, of his agency, and will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network South Asia.

The team at Milestone Brandcom has 175 specialists and over 100 active clients. The agency's OOH offering includes an event promotion activation division, a rural OOH activation, a retail and a digital OOH division.

Recently, Milestone Brandcom launched the 'Milestone Optimizer', a tool that optimises OOH media plans by tracking 25,000 sites across India and providing Gross Impression Points of an OOH campaign.

With the acquisition of Milestone Brandcom, Dentsu Aegis Network, which also owns Posterscope, a global outdoor media agency, the network claims to have become India's leading player in the OOH market.

Dentsu Aegis Network will take a majority share in Milestone Brandcom. "The company will retain its identity, branding and culture and share its knowledge in creative and OOH planning with the group," says the press release.

In the same note, Nick Waters, CEO, Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific, said, "Milestone Brandcom is a highly awarded and well respected agency in India. This acquisition marks another significant step as we build a high quality and scaled group in India. We welcome Nabendu and the team to the company."

Adds Bhasin, "This investment now establishes clear leadership for us in this very important medium, making us the leader in the OOH and OOH Retail space in India. We believe that OOH will play an increasingly important role for clients in years to come so we are delighted to be able to offer clients a market leading service."

Bhattacharyya expresses his joy with, "We are thrilled to join hands with the Dentsu Aegis Network and my entire team and I are looking forward to taking Milestone Brandcom to even greater heights. Being a part of a dynamic global group like Dentsu Aegis Network will help us be stronger together. OOH will become more and more important in India and we are confident that as market leaders we will be at the forefront of this progress."